Electrohome

Main offices and electronics plant, 809 Wellington Street, 1981

Electrohome Limited was a manufacturer of home electronics,
appliances, furniture, and high-tech commercial projection and display
systems, and an investor in television broadcasting, based in Kitchener.
It once employed 4400 people in almost 1.6 million square feet of
factories and service areas in Kitchener, Waterloo, and Cambridge, and
sales offices throughout North America and Europe. It also
established manufacturing facilities in the US and abroad.

In 1907, Arthur B. Pollock began manufacturing hornless phonographs
in Berlin (now Kitchener), and together with Alex Welker established the
Pollock Manufacturing Company in 1909. They soon acquired a woodworking
plant in Elmira for the construction of phonograph cabinets and in 1917
formed the Phonola Company of Canada to continue the phonograph
assembly and record business. The Pollock Manufacturing Company
continued to produce parts for the phonographs and other metal products.

Grimes radio/Phonola phonograph advertisement, ca. 1930

In 1925, the two business partners formed a new company,
Pollock-Welker Limited. They also established the Grimes Radio
Corporation to produce and sell Grimes radios in Canada. In 1933,
Pollock combined his companies to form Dominion Electrohome Industries
Limited. His son Carl became general manager of the new company,
which was commonly called Electrohome. It had three manufacturing
divisions: radio and communications, appliances and metal
products, and furniture and woodworking.

Advertisement, organs, ca. 1960

Advertisement, stereo hi-fi, 1950s

Advertisement, television, 1950s

Carl A. Pollock replaced his father as president in 1951 and brought
about organizational change to manage the growing company; he oversaw
the most successful years of Electrohome’s history. During the
decades to follow, Electrohome produced many different consumer
products, including:

Advertisement, Deilcraft bedroom furniture, 1976

Furniture: The name Deilcraft (from
the first four letters of the company’s name) was introduced around
1937 and became a household name in the Canadian home furnishings
industry. This division grew from the original 30,000 sq. ft. cabinetry
plant in Elmira with 50 employees to the 400,000 sq. ft. woodworking
plant built in a Kitchener industrial park in 1965 – Canada’s largest
cabinet plant. In addition to television and stereo cabinets, the
Deilcraft division produced bedroom and dining room sets and occasional
furniture.

Advertisement, motors, 1970s

Electric motors: Electrohome was the largest
producer in Canada of sub-fractional horsepower DC and AC motors,
manufacturing more than 400 models at the rate of 10,000 a day by the
1960s. The 10 millionth small electric motor was made at the Victoria
Street plant in 1967. The motors were used in many Electrohome products
as well as appliances by other manufacturers.

Dealer advertisement, fans, ca. 1940

Small appliances: Humidifiers, air
conditioners, heaters, and other ‘home comfort’ products formed a
significant part of the company’s production starting in the
1930s. Electrohome also became the largest manufacture of fans in
Canada. The company produced many other small appliances over the years,
from air purifiers to electric mixers and electric bug killers to
microwaves.

Advertisement, stereo hi-fi, 1965

Stereo and television: The company manufactured
radios from the beginning, and the 1940s saw developments in television
receivers. By the early 1950s, Electrohome was producing many
models of each as well as radio-TV-phonograph combinations. Their sound
quality was enhanced with the development of high-fidelity and then
stereophonic sound. In 1965 the first colour-television sets
became widely available and in 1969, colour television was the company’s
largest single product line. In fact, Electrohome engineered and
designed the only Canadian colour television receiver. The post-war
population explosion had created a boom in housing construction and as a
result the demand for consumer products like stereo hi-fi and
television steadily increased. Countless Canadian living rooms had an
Electrohome television or stereo console.

Television production line, 1960s

Stereo production, 1981

By 1965, Electrohome products were being sold in 23 countries. Total
sales in 1968 were $44.5 million. By end of the decade, Electrohome was
the second largest employer in Kitchener-Waterloo (behind the Dominion
Rubber Company).

In 1972, Carl’s son John A. Pollock became president of the company,
now officially called Electrohome Limited. The next decade saw many
changes for the company, some of them influenced by increasing
competition and imports in the television market and an economic
recession.

Reverse osmosis system, ca. 1977

Advertisement, Telidon, 1981

Electrohome abandoned television manufacturing and the electronics
division focused on commercial and industrial products, including
specialized video and data display monitors and large-screen projection
television. It also entered new fields, including reverse
osmosis/ultrafiltration systems and monitors for coin-operated video
games: Electrohome supplied custom-made monitors for many leading games
manufacturers, including Atari and Sega, in the late 1970s and early
1980s. The company also had brief ventures in satellite television
receivers and videotex hardware.

Advertisment, Display Systems monitor, 1992

Advertisement, projection systems, ca. 1991

By the end of the 1980s, the company had stopped manufacturing
consumer products altogether to focus on commercial data and video
projection and display systems. In 1987 when Electrohome
introduced the ECP 1000 single lens colour data and graphics video
projector, the first of its kind in the world, the company was on its
way to becoming a leader in this field. The Display Systems
business focused on monochrome and colour monitors and high-performance
LCD monitors and became a leading supplier for medical imaging and
financial trading rooms. The Projection Systems business produced
large screen colour video projection systems for data and graphics with
developments in LCD and DLP (digital light processing) technologies.

By the end of the 1990s, Electrohome had sold these businesses and in
2004 the last manufacturing plant and head office building on
Wellington Street in Kitchener was sold to Christie Digital Systems,
Inc. In 2007, Electrohome sold its trademarks and soon the corporation’s
shares were cancelled and delisted. Electrohome maintains an
office in the Wellington Street building and is in the process of
dissolving.

I used to repair these Apollo stereos in
Hamilton branch Electrohome Ltd., and was a road tech in the past up to
2004 owner Mike Collins, at the time previous manager of 809 Wellington
St. service in Kitchener. I have acquired a few Electrohome radios,
Viking etc., and a huge stereo console, Versailles, plus 1947 record am
sw radio combo, Serenader, to remind me of the past 30 years with the
company’s products. Thanks for the memories. I love this overview – it’s
great, thanks!